FACT-CHECK: Viral Oshiomhole Foot-Massage Video Not AI-Generated

A short, grainy clip of Senator Adams Oshiomhole apparently massaging a woman’s foot inside a private jet has become one of the most talked-about stories in Nigeria right now. Posted and reposted across platforms, the video quickly drew sharp criticism of elite extravagance especially after the senator’s recent comments on food prices. Within hours his team hit back hard, insisting the entire video is an AI fake meant to embarrass him.

The Claim

A viral video clip, roughly 30 seconds long and widely shared on social media on Tuesday, appears to show Senator Adams Oshiomhole massaging the foot of a woman inside a private jet cabin, with casual conversation and background music.

Senator Oshiomhole’s media office has claimed the footage is fake, describing it as a poorly crafted, edited, and fabricated video created using artificial intelligence (AI), intended for blackmail or to damage his reputation. The denial highlighted supposed technical irregularities, especially around the six-second mark, as evidence of manipulation.

Findings

Senator Oshiomhole, through his aide Oseni Momodu, issued statements to multiple Nigerian media outlets including THE WHISTLER, rejecting the video’s authenticity and labelling it AI-generated. The senator’s team urged caution about digitally manipulated content but provided no independent forensic analysis, metadata review, or third-party expert verification to substantiate the claim.

Various sources have identified the woman in the video as Leshaan Dagama, a South African lifestyle influencer and adult-content creator. In her public response on Instagram Stories on Wednesday, she addressed the backlash by stating that the senator was the problem and directing critics to direct their anger toward him rather than her, effectively implying the encounter was real and not fabricated.

Her response contradicts the AI claim, as she neither denied participation nor supported the fabrication assertion, and she reportedly faced significant trolling after Nigerians flooded her page.

The clip itself is low-resolution, handheld-style footage typical of personal recordings inside an aircraft. Public reactions on platforms largely dismiss the AI explanation with sarcasm and memes mocking the denial, treating the video as genuine.

To verify this claim, THE WHISTLER applied multiple deepfake detection tools to the circulating clip, including Deepware Scanner, Zhuque AI Detection Assistant, AU Video Detector, Sight Engine, and Hive AI Deepfake Detection.

These tools analysed for visual artefacts (such as hand/finger inconsistencies, lip-sync mismatches, unnatural facial blending, or lighting errors), audio patterns, metadata inconsistencies, and provenance signals.

The scans showed no detectable hallmarks of generative AI manipulation, with high confidence scores indicating the video is authentic footage rather than synthetically created or significantly altered by current AI video generation methods.

Verdict

FALSE: The claim that the video is AI-generated lacks supporting evidence and is contradicted by the woman’s public response implying the event occurred, the absence of detectable AI artefacts in the clip, and results from deepfake detection tools that confirmed no signs of AI generation or manipulation.

As of Thursday morning, the video appears to be genuine footage rather than an AI fabrication. This assessment is based on current available reporting, contextual evidence, and tool-based verification and could be updated if credible new forensic evidence or higher-resolution source analysis emerges later.